A History Of Presidential Pets

Richard M. Nixon's dogs looking out a window of the
White House
Wikipedia

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney toured swing states in the final
days of the presidential campaign to emphasize their differences.
But the two candidates have at least one thing in common: A
history of doggie controversy.

Obama, who famously promised his daughters a dog if he won the
White House, came under fire from animal welfare organizations in
2008 after he and his family adopted
purebred Portuguese Water Dog "Bo" from the Kennedy
family as opposed to getting a shelter dog as Obama had said the
family would do. (Bo might be generously considered a "rescue
dog," as he was first given to another family. That placement
didn't work out, so the Kennedys took him back and gifted him to
the Obamas instead.)

Romney's canine controversy goes further back. In 2007, the
Boston Globe opened a profile of Romney with an anecdote about a
1983 Romney family vacation. With the family station wagon packed
to the gills, Romney strapped the family's Irish setter "Seamus"
to the top of the station wagon in a dog carrier with a homemade
windshield for the 12-hour drive. Both Democrats and Romney's
Republican challengers in the presidential primaries attacked him
over the incident.

Almost every U.S. president has had a pet of some sort, but
George Washington had a virtual menagerie. As befitting a
Revolutionary War hero, Washington had a stable of horses,
including stallions named Samson, Steady, Leonidas and Magnolia,
according to the Presidential Pet Museum in Virginia. Washington
further demonstrated his abilities in pet naming with his herd of
hounds: Drunkard, Taster, Tipsy, Tipler (are we sensing a
theme?), Mopsey, Cloe, Forester, Captain, Lady, Rover, Vulcan,
Searcher and ... Sweetlips.

Not to be outdone, Martha Washington owned a pet parrot.

2. Early exotics

Thomas Jefferson, the nation's third president, kept two
Briards, shaggy
herding dogs originally bred in France. The dogs, a gift
from France's General Marquis de Lafayette, reveal Jefferson's
close ties with that country: He was minister to France between
1785 and 1789.

Jefferson also kept a mockingbird, but perhaps the most unusual
animals to come into his possession were the members of a small
menagerie sent to him by the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805.
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark spent that winter at Fort
Mandan, in what is now North Dakota. Before they continued their
expedition toward the Pacific, they sent Jefferson a shipment
containing a grouse, four magpies and a prairie
dog — all alive. It's not clear what happened to the
grouse, but according to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the
president sent the prairie dog and at least one magpie to the
Peale Museum, a gallery of natural history and art in
Philadelphia.

3. Roosevelt's zoo

With the possible exception of George Washington, nobody named
pets like Teddy Roosevelt did. The 26th president came to the
White House with more animals than the place had ever seen,
including a pony named Algonquin that reportedly once took a ride
on the White House elevator. [America's
Favorite Pets]

Among the Roosevelt family's furry friends were a herd of
creatively named guinea pigs, including Fighting Bob Evans,
Bishop Doane, Dr. Johnson, Father O'Grady and Admiral Dewey. The
family also kept a small black bear named Jonathan Edwards, a
badger named Josiah, a blue macaw named
Eli Yale, a hen named Baron Spreckle and a
lizard named Bill. First daughter Alice Roosevelt kept a garter
snake named Emily Spinach, so dubbed because the snake was as
green as spinach and as thin as Alice's aunt Emily.

4. The last cow

Before the 1900s, it wasn't unusual for farm animals to roam the
White House grounds. Sheep were used to keep grass trimmed during
the Madison presidency, and William Henry Harrison kept a goat
and a Durham cow. Rutherford B. Hayes kept pedigreed Jersey cows,
and horses were also common.

But the honor of the last cow in the White House goes to Pauline
Wayne, a Holstein that grazed the White House lawn
and provided
milk for William Howard Taft and his family. When Taft
left office in 1913, Pauline Wayne retired to Wisconsin.

5. The Checkers controversy

Days after Dwight D. Eisenhower chose Richard Nixon as his
running mate in 1952, the New York Post threatened to bring Nixon's
political career to a close with accusations that he had made
more than $18,000 through a secret political slush fund.
Republicans urged Eisenhower to drop Nixon from the ticket, but
Nixon went on the offensive, staging a televised speech that
would become known as the "Checkers" speech.

Checkers was the family dog, a gift from a Texas businessman. In
an emotional appeal, Nixon made his case to the American people
for keeping the gift. "And you know, the kids, like all
kids, loved
the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that
regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it,"
he said.

The vision of Nixon as a family man and dog-lover — not to
mention his frank talk about his personal finances in the rest of
the speech — won the public's heart. Nixon went on to become VP,
and would win the presidency in 1968, bringing with him to the
White House a poodle named Vicky, a terrier named Pasha and an
Irish setter named King Timahoe. Checkers died in 1964 and is
buried in Long Island's Bide-a-Wee Pet Cemetery.